


The Indestructible Piñata

by nosecoffee



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alex's rage, Angst, Comedy, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Lots of Babies, Minor Character Deaths, Multi, Philip's rage, Piñata's, Screaming, Swearing, and then it got sad, i'm sorry guys, mild homophobia, this was supposed to be funny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 17:40:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5975677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nosecoffee/pseuds/nosecoffee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Philip turns six, he knows what he wants for his birthday. He wants a piñata.<br/>Philip, and the entire Hamilsquad get more than they bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Indestructible Piñata

In the year 2006, Philip was turning six, and he demanded a piñata.

  
Eliza had furrowed her eyebrows as John contemplated the five year-olds command. "He's never had one before. How does he even know what a piñata is?" Alex asked after the child went to bed that night, and after Eliza soothed one year-old Alexander Jr.

  
"He went to Theo's and she told him about hers last year. According to Burr she keeps it's colourful, creepy head mounted on the wall as a prize." John responded, shuddering and taking a sip of Sprite.

  
"Okay that's weird. D'you reckon if we do get him one, he'll want to do the same?" Alex asked, imagining having to pin a creepy donkey head to the wall above Philip's bed. He made a disgusted face.

  
"Probably."

  
"On the other hand," Eliza replied, walking in and talking in a hushed voice. "If we don't, he'll whine about it, and when he's older, he'll claim we neglected him."

  
"You don't know that." John pointed at her and she slapped his arm, sitting down at the table and stealing his Sprite can. She grimaced when she found it was empty.

  
"I do. Back me up, Hammy." Eliza elbowed her other husband and he rolled his eyes.

  
"We're married; you're literally teasing me with your own surname. But she's got a point."

  
John sighed, throwing his hands up in surrender. "Fine, we'll get him the stupid fucking piñata."

* * *

 

"Why are there so many of them?" Alex whispered in a terrified voice.

  
Eliza shrugged, and turned back to a whining Angie and a crying AJ.

  
"Beats me. Which one do you want, buddy?" John crouched down to Philip's height as the five year-old contemplated his choice.

  
Then he pointed at the mainly warm coloured one, which looked sturdy, and box-like. It had a creepy, smiling face. John shuddered, but followed his son's command and took it off the shelf for him.

  
He shook it and there was a large rattle inside. "It's already got candy in it." An incredulous Alexander said, staring at the paper mâché donkey.

  
"Less shit we have to buy."

  
Eliza shot him a withering look for his language and Alex pulled out his phone to snap a picture.

  
"Whatcha gonna do with that?" John asked as they walked to the register.

  
"Post it on Twitter. The world needs to know my fear."

  
The taller man snorted.

* * *

 

They were standing on the porch, and Philip was about to take the first swing at it.

  
Alex turned to his husband and whispered, "I can't wait to see its dumb fucking face get crushed by the baseball bat."

  
John snorted and pushed the shorter man away, playfully, and watched his son with interest as he swung at the donkey.

  
It made a satisfying crunching noise, and when he pulled the bat back, there wasn't even a dent to prove what had happened.

  
Eliza frowned, joining them, as the other kids groaned in disappointment. "That was weird. Must be a sturdy piece of paper mâché."

  
Theo took up the bat next, saying something to Philip, along the lines of; "I'll show you how it's really done."

  
"That sassy five year-old." Alex muttered, and she swung, with force behind the hit.

  
Philips hit had been satisfying. Theo's was goddamn exhilarating. She pulled the bat back to look at her handy-work-

  
Nothing. Not a dent, not a scratch. Not a bit of craft paper falling off to signify destruction.

  
Philip looked smug and Theo looked disappointed.

  
One-by-one each child took a swing at it, and each time the piñata came away on top. They went around, taking multiple hits, each one getting more desperate in hunger and in search of sugar.

  
William Jay started crying.

  
Eventually Alex himself got frustrated after Angie tried to beat it into the ground and took the bat from her hands, attempting to beat it to a pulp.

  
It's smug fucking face grinned up at him.

  
He almost screamed.

* * *

 

Eliza had to run to the shops to compensate for lack of candy.

* * *

 

John had to peel Alex off the porch before the shorter man could rip into it with his bare hands.

* * *

 

Alex may have cried.

* * *

 

Just a little.

* * *

 

Philip had screamed, dropping to his knees and hitting it with his bare fists, screaming, "WHAT ARE YOU?!"

* * *

 

They all stood around the table, glowering at the donkey in disgust and mesmerisation.

  
"Wow." Lafayette was the first to break the silence. "Are you sure you ever touched it?"

  
Hercules was gaping.

  
"Can I try?" Peggy asked, and Eliza gestured for her to go ahead. The youngest Schuyler sister grabbed it and yelled as she threw it to the ground.

  
Nothing.

  
"I think we're hurting ourselves more than we're hurting the donkey." Angelica observed, picking it up by its head and placing it back on the table.

  
"It's creeping me out." Hercules murmured, and John shrugged, helplessly.

  
"Nothing we've done so far has done anything. The baseball bat, the hammer, next-doors Rottweiler, Alex..."

  
They all turned to find Alex in the corner, head in his hands. "I have failed." His voice was muffled and they all turned back to the piñata.

  
"So what do we do?" Hercules asked no one in particular.

  
"Wait. It's all we can do." John replied and they all nodded in agreement.

* * *

 

They left it on the coffee table. Philip started crying when he saw it and locked himself in his room yelling, "FAILURE IS NOT SOMETHING I CAN FACE RIGHT NOW!"

  
Eliza glared at Alex. "That's your child."

  
Alex raised his hands in surrender, slumping against the bedroom door. "Actually, it's John's kid, I just raised him to be as awesome as me."

  
She refused to high five him for that.

  
Every day when he got home from work, Alex would sit on the couch and stare at it.

  
The day Jefferson returned from France he walked in and kicked it off the coffee table.

  
"Alex, Hammy, baby, are you okay?" Eliza called from the kitchen, having heard the resulting crashing noise the donkey made after hitting the wood panel flooring.

  
"Jefferson can suck a dick!" He replied.

  
Eliza walked in with AJ on her hip and a cocked eyebrow. "You will be pleased to know that Philip's teacher called today to tell me that he was telling his ninja turtles to "get in the fucking van". I blame your parenting."

  
"What exactly is wrong with my parenting?"

  
"John doesn't swear around the kids."

  
"Well maybe you should marry John."

  
"I did." She glanced at the piñata quickly. "My only mistake was marrying you, also."

  
Alex kicked the paper mâché donkey again. "D'you reckon I can put my foot through it?"

  
Eliza walked out of the room again. "I don't know. CAN you?"

  
Alex threw it at the couch.

* * *

 

It became the thing they took their anger out on.

  
When Jefferson and Madison refused to support his debt plan bill because VIRGINIA wasn't in debt, Alex spent a full hour trying to run it over with the lawn mower.

  
When John's dads Christmas card to them was full of homophobic slurs, they didn't see him for half an hour and he came out of the garden shed looking worse for wear, the piñata grinning creepily still.

  
In January of 2007 Eliza found out she was pregnant again, she took a butchers knife to it.

  
Nothing ever came from it.

  
Philip started calling it "The Indestructible Donkey", and Angie brought it to school for Show-and-Tell once, even getting her class to line up and have a go at it.

  
When Washington stepped down Alex actually screamed when he got home and threw himself at it.

  
At Philip's seventh birthday party they strung it up again, just to see what would happen.

  
William Jay cried again.

  
So did Alex.

  
It still didn't break.

* * *

 

Eliza was nine months pregnant with twins, two weeks late, and was lying in the couch watching M*A*S*H when her water broke. The piñata was on the coffee table still.

  
John gave her some painkillers to ease the pain of contractions, and Alex was hovering by the door, waiting for the ambulance.

  
"It's taunting me." She whispered and John crouched beside her, cautiously.

  
"What was that, sweetheart?" He asked.

  
Eliza pointed at the donkey. "It's fucking taunting me. It knows we can't break it and its TAUNTING ME."

  
Alex frowned and walked over, stroking her arm. "Is she okay?"

  
"I think those were some hardcore drugs I gave her." John replied, casting frowning glances back and forth between her and the donkey.

  
"It's fucking Satan. A fucking Satan possessed piñata. Fucking indestructible. It was planted on this earth to taunt us and torture us until we fucking died." Eliza continued and Alex stifled a laugh. "Well, I've had it."

  
She stood up, to go God knows where and sat back down, abruptly. "Oh," and then she started screaming that the babies where coming and Alex ran back to the door in panic.

* * *

 

James Alexander and John Church were delivered right in that living room at five in the morning.

  
She was in too much of a state to move, and she specifically asked for the grinning donkey to leave, because she didn't feel comfortable with it staring at her.

  
John shoved it up the back of their cupboard and rushed back to the living room.

  
And then they sort of forgot in, in the new-babies filled haze.

* * *

 

They sort of forgot it for two years.

* * *

 

Peggy found it in May of 2008, when they were Spring cleaning for the next baby.

  
She was up in their closet, talking to Eliza, who was sitting on the bed when Peggy screamed.

  
"What is it? What's wrong?" Eliza asked, as her sister pulled the "Satan Possessed" grinning piñata from the back of the closet.

  
Eliza screamed too.

  
They placed it on Alex's desk and when he got home they heard him scream and then a crash as he knocked over a bookshelf.

  
He threw it into the hallway, yelling; "I HOPE THAT YOU BURN MOTHERFUCKER!"

  
John laughed when he found out, high-fiving his wife and fist-bumping his sister-in-law.

  
"Aw, sweetie, I'm sorry they upset you." John laughed, kissing Alex lazily. Alex melted into the kiss, resting his chin on Johns shoulder when John went to kiss his neck, but pushed him away.

  
"What's wrong?" John asked.

  
"The piñata's turning me off."

* * *

 

It appeared at the end of Philip's bed on his tenth birthday in 2010, and the three woke in giggles to their sons screams of, "IT'S HAUNTING ME."

  
He walked in a few minutes later and threw it at them, muttering about what a fine fucking birthday it was so far.

  
Eliza shouted that he needed to watch his language.

  
John smothered his giggles in the pillow and when he wouldn't stop, Alex attempted to smother HIM.

  
Angie looked at it fearfully at breakfast and AJ was reminded if the tale of the Sixth Birthday.

  
"Please don't get me one this year," he pleaded with them. "I don't need that kind of guilt."

  
Eliza snorted into her cornflakes, making the twins burst into their own giggles and baby William squeal.

  
It was a good birthday.

* * *

 

They put it on Alex's desk for his birthday in 2011, and pulled it out, slightly crushed, but relatively unharmed, from the White House trash compactor.

  
"So now we know it needs a lot of force to dent it's dumb fucking face." John observed and Alex punched him in the shoulder, playfully before kissing him and Eliza, and thanking them.

  
There were quiet moments and quiet moments with a piñata in the background.

  
Eliza attempted to put it through the shredder and was rewarded with a lack of craft paper on its front left leg.

  
They all cheered.

* * *

 

It was 2012 when they had a minor breakthrough.

  
Hercules was going through a rough time, so they offered him the donkeys services, which he accepted.

  
It came back with a small nick to the cardboard on its neck.

  
Eliza tried to kiss him.

* * *

 

When Eliza Holly was born, the piñata disappeared, courtesy of Alex, until it was found again in the Easter of 2013, by Philip, in the garden shed.

  
It was at this point, with his birthday piñata under his arm, that he told his family that he was dating Theodosia Burr.

  
Eliza shrugged and congratulated him, John cheered, and Alex attempted to ask if her father had put it up to this.

  
He had not.

* * *

 

Later that year, Theodosia's mother died of stomach cancer.

  
Neither Burr's were seen for about a week before Aaron turned up at four am on the Hamilton's doorstep, in the pouring rain.

  
Eliza offered him tea, and told him it was alright to cry, and asked if he wanted to watch tv, but Alex was the lifesaver of the night when he entered with the infamous paper mâché donkey under his arm.

  
He offered it to Burr and Alex's spouses saw a blossoming friendship begin, in that moment.

  
Of course it was hard to watch Burr kneel on their porch, screaming and crying and bashing his fists into the piñata, but they knew it was doing him good.

  
Theo showed up in the morning looking for him, and disappeared with Philip, crying into his shoulder.

  
It was one of the moments they knew that piñata had been the right choice.

* * *

 

2014 was a tough year.

  
They had a miscarriage, Angie and her boyfriend of a year had a huge falling out, Adam's fired Alex and John's dad died (they may not have been close but the loss still hit him hard).

  
That was the year that the piñata was used most often, the year that PJ was born and that Angelica moved away to live with her fiancée.

  
It wasn't the best year, and now the piñata was full of both good memories and bad memories.

* * *

 

Lafayette took a chainsaw to in it 2015.

  
He disappeared for a few days and woke up in Australia after getting drunk and flying to Sydney with the donkey under his arm.

  
One of its legs was deformed now and it couldn't stand straight.

  
Lafayette had quite the story to tell once he got back to America.

* * *

 

2016 was the year they triumphed.

  
Alex had finally gotten a job again and was working in upper New York when they all got the call.

  
"Meet outside my building. I think I've finally worked out how to break the Indestructible Piñata."

  
Even Philip and Theo showed up, skipping school, and they were all surprised to see Angelica back from England on the dirty New York sidewalk.

  
They all stood there, waiting.

  
And then suddenly the donkey crashed down on the road in front of them.

  
A few people shrieked, and they all looked up to find Alex hanging out a window.

  
"Did it work?" He called down to them.

  
"No." Angelica called back up.

  
Theo screamed when the donkey got hit by a passing car and ripped open, spilling wrapped candies out over the road.

  
They cheered and ran to gather the corpse and the candy.

  
They sat in his office and ate it, as Alex pinned the head to the wall in triumph (like he had been dreading to do for Philip ten years ago).

  
"Man, this candy tastes like shit." John commented through a mouthful of old Skittles. "Totally worth it."

  
Then he turned to Philip. "Just so you know, if that's the hassle for piñata's, we're never getting you one again."

  
His son laughed.

 

 

 

**Fin.**

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. Wow. Okay. So, I hoped you liked that as much as I did.  
> You can find me on Tumblr as nose-coffee, where you can message me or just scream at me about Hamilton. Prompts are also great.  
> Thanks for reading. :P


End file.
